Q24 - Music critic: How well an

[clarafok]

i'm also having trouble with this question. it should be Q24 on the second logical reasoning section that begins with 'how well an underground rock group's...'

from my understanding, an underground rock group's success does not depend on sales. some rock groups prefer their records to not sell very well because that would mean the music is really trendy, and hence, not underground. but really crappy sales would mean the underground group is incompetent. so i guess from that, we can infer that underground rock groups are successful if:
1. not very high sales, but not very low
2. not trendy music
3. not incompetent

what part of the argument indicates that a group can be unsuccessful due to any or all of the above and not just one of them?

i went with D, is that wrong because it's a mistaken negation?

any help would be much appreciated!
thanks in advance!

[gotomedschool]

I found this question to be difficult as well and was hoping I could find an explanation on this board to no avail

I thought this was definitely one of the harder questions in the section so I was a little surprised to see no post on this yet...

My understanding of the argument core is as follows:

The commercial success of an underground rock group is not indicative of the group's success as "an underground group" because selling well may be a sign of selling out and making your music sound to trendy(Mars Volta anyone? )

Additionally the argument states that many underground musicians take not selling well as a good thing, presumably because it indicates that the group didn't sell out and make their music to mainstream sounding but at the same time, weak sales could also be because the group is incompetent.


So we know selling well isn't a good thing for an underground rock group but also that not selling well could possibly be bad thing aka incompetence. Generally speaking, we don't really know what makes a rockgroup successful but we do know what makes it unsuccessful(too trendy or incompetence)


A-I left this as a contender but I think its wrong because its never really explicitly stated at what point along the spectrum of record sales(from good seller--->poor seller) does an underground rock group go from being Successful underground--> Not successful underground.

B-I kept this is as a contender but unforuntaely didnt select it. Both factors sited in this answer choice are supported by the info in the stimulus. If Incompetent or Too trendy to be underground or BOTH ---> Unsuccessful Underground rock Group

C-I eliminated this one also, It just sounded off to me.

D-I originally selected this one but I think it is incorrect because we are not primarily concerned with what makes a underground rockgroup successful so much as we are concerned with what makes them unsuccessful. Additionally, just because its recordings DO sell well does not mean a rockgroup is not successful as an underground group. It says in the stimulus, "it MAY BE because some of the music is too trendy." It doesn't ever explicitly say that positive record sales means that the music is too trendy but suggests that as a possibility. On the other hand, weak sales MAY BE because of the group's incompetence or it could be that they are an OG underground group---> we don't really know.

E-I eliminated this one, competence is not a mark of success.. That sounded wrong to me and contrary to what the stimulus says.


I'd really appreciate further clarification on this if an instructor or fellow poster has some insight. thanks.

[bbirdwell]

So we know selling well isn't a good thing for an underground rock group but also that not selling well could possibly be bad thing aka incompetence. Generally speaking, we don't really know what makes a rockgroup successful but we do know what makes it unsuccessful(too trendy or incompetence)

You nailed it! This is exactly what (B) says.

Conclusion:
Sales ≠ indication of underground success.

Premise:
good sales could be due to selling out (ie not underground).
bad sales could be due to incompetence.

(A) is no help here because the argument only says that good sales MAY indicate selling out. It's not true that "good sales --> selling out," it's true that "good sales SOMETIMES = selling out." Also, no distinction is made in the argument between selling "pretty poorly" and selling "really poorly" (the spectrum you mentioned), so this is not useful.

(B) yes. The "or both" part is sort of superfluous. If I tell you A-->C and B-->C, it's obvious that A+B-->C. So, if they suck, underground bands are unsuccessful, and if they're not underground, they're unsuccessful as underground bands.

(C) opinions of other musicians is out of scope.

(D) you got it.

(E) you got it -- this will not validate our conclusion, as we need a principle to do, while it may not technically be contradicted by the information, if we threw it a bone and made a few assumptions to let it apply, it would run contrary to the argument.

[daniel.g.winter]

I chose C for this one.

The stimulus tells us that "many underground musicians consider it desirable for a recording not to sell well." C tells us that even if an underground group's recordings meet criteria that many underground musicians consider desirable (not selling well), that's not a mark of that group's success. And the first sentence of the stimulus tells us that how well an underground rock group's recordings sell is no mark of that group's success as an underground group. So even if an underground band had a recording not sell well, we don't know if that's due to incompetence or them being very underground, and thus we can't tell if they are successful or not (they could be successful if they are super underground and that's why the recording sold badly, or they could be unsuccessful and incompetent, just a terrible band, and that's why it didn't sell.)

Does that make sense at all? I feel like the first sentence was the conclusion, and C helps to justify that. What am I missing?

[americano1990]

Yea (C) seemed pretty attractive at first because of the reasons you brought up, but I realized thats the exact reason why it is incorrect.

It is not JUSTIFYING the conclusion (the first sentence) as you wrote, but rather it just boosts it, meaning that it adds nothing to what we know (like a premise booster). The music critic concludes that sale is no mark of the group's success and (C) simply says....sale is not the mark of success.
* I kinda loosened up the language and interpreted the CRITERIA--seemingly out of scope since what musicians consider desirable may not necessarily amount to a criterion...but anyways.--as referring to recording's not sellin' well.

Yea, so (C) simply repeats the conclusion so thats no help. Again in principle questions you have to be able to use information provided by the premise to arrive at the conclusion. But (C) simply leaves us wondering what the premise has to do with the conclusion. Principle questions are like a train ride. You wanna get from point A to point B. Choice (B) does it by linking the premise and the conclusion. (C) in contrast tells nothing about the reasoning and simply says...."you arrived at point B" Its no help therefore.

Cool?

[monicajamaluddin]

I got this wrong and picked D and am having trouble understanding B, this is where I've gotten so far:


1. Records Sell Well > too trendy > not underground (i.e. unsuccessful)

2. records dont sell well > incompetent > unsuccessful

so either option leads us to the band being unsuccessful - which B describes.

note: the above are not meant as conditional statements, more to show a train of thought - i realize that just bc a record sells well doesnt mean its too trendy or if it doesnt that its necessarily incompetent

Is that an appropriate way to look at this?

Still can't pinpoint how to prove D wrong though....

[asuka1210]

I also chose D over B first run.
But after looking at the question again, I think the prompt can be diagrammed as:

Sells Well -> Too Trendy -> ~Success
Weak Sales -> Incompetent -> ~Success

Combining the 2 gives you
Too Trendy OR Incompetent -> ~Success
^^This is the same as (B).

Answer D is diagrammed as ~Incompetent AND ~Sells well -> Success, which is actually mistaken negation.

[acechaowang]

This question is extremely hard and here is what i thought on this one:
A: If we take the contra positive of the statement--sell especially well or especially poorly is a mark of a underground rock group to be unsuccessful , we will find out actually it weakens the argument because it is saying that how well an underground rock groups recordings sell is sometimes mark of that group's success. So A is out
B: Correct since it bridges the gap of the argument. There are two premises and the best answer will bridge the two together. Put it back into the original argument we will find that if a recording sells well, it may be because some of the music on the recordings are too trendy, and too trendy is unsuccessful. so many people will consider it desirable for a recording not to sell well, but weak sales may simply be the result of group's incompetence, which is still not unsuccessful, so how well an undergraduate rock group's recordings sell is not mark of success because of both premises.
C is very tempting answer. But compared to B, it only bridges one aspect of the two premises. So it is relatively worse than B and thus can be ruled it out.
D: this argument never mentions what happens if the group is competent. it is talking about what happened if the group is incompetent. so out.
E: if this is true, the original argument will not make sense at all because you will simply say: okay, then why you talk about this crap?

[joseph.m.kirby]

So we want to use a principle to justify the argument. In other words, we want to add something to the argument to make it stronger. Look at Principle-Justify questions as a Strengthen/Sufficient Assumption-ish type question.

Let’s summarize the argument:

P: Good Sales --> (may be) too trendy
P: ~Good Sales --> (some) desire
P: ~Good Sales --> (may be) incompetence
-----
C: Sales (Good | ~Good) --> ~mark of success


From this summation, we want to justify the conclusion: good or bad sales is not a mark of success.

A-
successful --> ~especially good sales & ~especially bad sales .........

The reference to "especially" good or bad sales makes this answer irrelevant. This answer does not help to justify the conclusion as we are focused on good sales and ~good sales.

B-
incompetent | too trendy | both --> ~successful

If we plug this answer into the argument, it makes everything fully functional. If sales are good, it may be because the music is too trendy, which would mean the band is unsuccessful. If sales are bad, it may be because of incompetence, which would mean the band is unsuccessful. So good or bad sales cannot be confirmed as a mark of success.

C-
U. Group: Meet criteria (~sell well --> desirable) --> ~mark of success

This answer is attractive; however, this answer does not fully justify the conclusion as it only addresses ~sell well. By not also addressing selling well with mark of success, this answer leaves open a hole in the argument. Notice how (B) includes selling well and not selling well so as to provide a better justification (strengthening) of the argument.


D-
competent & ~good sales --> successful

This answer doesn't connect with, or help to justify, the information in the stimulus. From the stimulus, we know that:

P: ~Good Sales --> (may be) incompetence
------
C: Sales (Good | ~Good) --> ~mark of success

Looking at (D) and the stimulus, it should be apparent that (D) cannot be used to justify the stimulus. Moreover, since we know that (B) can, we shouldn't spend too much extra time over-analyzing (D).

E-
competence & ~too trendy --> ~mark of success

Like (D), (E) doesn't connect with our stimulus as nicely as (B). The stimulus mentions incompetence, not competence. The stimulus mentions too trendy, not not too trendy. The only way this information could be relevant was if the LSAT was trying to trick us by offering a contrapositive that could be used to justify the conclusion. However, the LSAT isn't doing that here.

[nansungmo]

I am a little baffled and confused by this question. The first sentence, "How well an underground rock group's recordings sell is no mark of that group's success," conveys that regardless of how well or not very well the sales of CD is it doesn't attribute to the band's success. Therefore, I understood it as, HIGH SALE or LOW SALE, it has nothing to do with the band's success, but maybe there's an alternative to defining the band's success. What am I missing here?

[maryadkins]

I am a little baffled and confused by this question. The first sentence, "How well an underground rock group's recordings sell is no mark of that group's success," conveys that regardless of how well or not very well the sales of CD is it doesn't attribute to the band's success. Therefore, I understood it as, HIGH SALE or LOW SALE, it has nothing to do with the band's success, but maybe there's an alternative to defining the band's success. What am I missing here?

I'm with you. This question gets me every time.

Here's how I think we have to understand that first sentence: doing well in sales or not doing well in sales both can mean the rock group is unsuccessful.

It's not how it reads (which I agree with you about--that it has nothing to do with success, not that it necessarily means lack of success), but (B) is more clearly correct when you take the extreme interpretation of that first sentence.

Hopefully that clarifies things as much as this question can be clarified. I wouldn't dwell on it for too long. It's really poorly written.

[FarOutsidetheBox]

So we know selling well isn't a good thing for an underground rock group but also that not selling well could possibly be bad thing aka incompetence. Generally speaking, we don't really know what makes a rockgroup successful but we do know what makes it unsuccessful(too trendy or incompetence)

You nailed it! This is exactly what (B) says.

I must respectfully disagree, but I think I have figured out how to attack this question. This is one of the hardest LRs I have ever seen. I got it wrong when I took the LSAT for the first time and got stuck on it again (but got it right) when I took it as a PT.

Let's look at the argument:
P1. If your sales are too good, you may be too popular to be underground.
P2. If your sales are weak, you may just be incompetent
Conclusion: Sales don't necessarily indicate success

The missing connection between premises and conclusion is obviously that these situations contradict being successful (because if they didn't, if you could be too mainstream but still be "successful," then the argument doesn't hold water). So we need something that says too mainstream = not successful and incompetent = not successful. This is precisely answer (B).

(A) tempted me but it's not correct. P1 still allows that you could sell like hotcakes and still be successful. All the critic says is that selling well doesn't mean you're successful because you might be selling well for the wrong reasons.

(C) It's outside of the scope because what bands desire is never connected to sales volume.

(D) Tempted me but it's backwards. This tells you when a band IS successful, but the premise is all about situations in which you could sell well but NOT be successful.

(E) Backwards. The argument assumes that these two ARE related to success.

Anyone, remember, every LSAT has killer questions like this and you can still miss 1 or 2 and get a 180!

[ttunden]

Okay the explanations above were kinda confusing but after reading them and reading/redoing this question I think there is a much easier way to explain this question.



This is basically a strengthen/sufficient assumption question. More so sufficient assumption because of the keyword justify the argument.

paraphrasing the conclusion: The music groups sales do not reflect their ability.

Support: this group may have good sales but that could be because the music is trendy and therefore the group is bad since the music is not UNDERGROUND.

A lot of underground musicians desire for their recordings to not sell well... so a lot of groups want their music to do bad or basically not to sell well.

but then the author goes against this and says just because their sales are not good...weak.... it could be because the group is incompetent or not good. Its not because they are so good and that their desire of not selling well is being met because they are authentic. Its because they suck.


Okay so whatever it is, I gotta find an answer choice that will strengthen this argument and show that sales do not reflect the groups music ability. That just because a music group....linkin park... has good sales doesn't mean they are an amazing group. or because they have weak sales doesn't mean they are doing a good job.


a - no because if you take the contrapositive it says good sales or bad sales then group is unsuccessful. So this basically goes against our conclusion because it is saying SALES does matter and does truly reflect the groups music ability.

c - out of scope. Who cares what other underground musicians consider desirable or what their criteria is. This isn't going to help justify our conclusion/argument.

D - similar to A. if the records do not sell well..sell poorly... then group is successful as an underground group. NO this will go against our conclusion and show that sales does reflect the groups music ability.

E - No this will go against our argument. Author is assuming that authentic underground music is a good thing and mark of success as well as groups competence.

notice that in the stimulus there are no guarantees, its all just "may." I 'd be careful in diagramming and trying to do what some of the users above me did with their diagrams.

[involved with the LSAT among others]

This one was hard. And atypical. It is a sort of dichotomy right from the beginning. Something, in the world of this question, is either successful or non-successful. There is no neutral because neutral would fail to be described as successful and would therefore be non-successful. So again, a thing here is either successful or non-successful. If a proposed measure of success can be shot down by referring to something, then that something must be a trait of non-successful.

Clue 1: a possible sign of success is proposed - good record sales - and the critic says that this can't be considered an indicator of success. Why? because strong sales could be coming from the music being too trendy etc. Well if strong sales can be disproved as being an indicator of success by considering that it could be coming from trendiness etc, then we must deduce that trendiness etc. is a sign of non-success.

Clue 2: an alternative sign of success is proposed - low record sales. No, says the critic, this may only be coming from incompetence. And again - if something - low record sales - can be disproved as being a sign of success by pointing out that it could be the result of incompetence, then we must deduce that incompetence is a sign of non-success.

We have to deduce these things because they aren't directly stated. If someone says that maria is gorgeous and you respond - no, she has big ears, we must deduce that you consider big ears to be non-gorgeous. If someone says that Joe is really rich and you say no, he has a broken-down car, then we must deduce that you consider a broken-down car to be non-rich. Basically.

The correct answer simply articulates these ideas. Two proposed indicators of success are offered and are both shot down by mentioning possible alternative explanations which lead to an alternative explanation of non-success. Great record sales means success? no, it could be happening because of trendiness etc. (so trendiness must be an indicator of non-success) Poor record sales means success? No, it could be happening because of incompetence. (so incompetence must be considered an trait of non-success) This is both extremely easy - it could be a number 3 question viewed this way, and extremely hard because I would be looking for something more complicated by this point in the section.

[kunaljaypatel]

My Take:

Tough question. It was one of the two that I circled for Blind Review in this section when taking this PT today.

It's super important for you to remember what you're looking for. Under the time crunch, it's easy to forget/get caught up in the answers--I know I did. When I Blind reviewed this, the answer was pretty clear to me.

This is a principle support question. So, we're looking for something that strengthens the argument to make it follow from the premises to the conclusion.

The premises are
If a recording sells well, it may be because it's too trendy to be considered authentically underground.
Some musicians think that it's more desirable for a recording to not sell well.
But, weak sales may be due to incompetence.
(these statements essentially show that there's no logical arrow between selling well and success)

The conclusion is in the first line: How well an underground rock group's recordings sell is no mark of the group's success as an underground group.

So essentially we have no information on what is successful underground, but we know two things that are surefire as 'not successful undegroundl'--incompetence or too trendy to not be authentic underground.

A. We have no information on what are the necessary characteristics of a successful underground group. The contrapositive of this statement isn't related to the two things that we identified as sufficient for an underground group to not be successful.
B. This is it. Logically this is: Incompetent or too trendy-> NOT successful
C. This would be a good answer for a Must be True question. This certainly doesn't justify the reasoning.
D. Once again, we can't conclude that an underground group is successful if certain conditions are met. We don't know necessary characteristics of a successful underground group.
E. I could see this as a trap answer for a main point/conclusion question.

[DavidS899]

Can someone explain how that stimuli states that a rock group is unsuccessful if it is incompetent?
We don't learn anything about that supposed connection it just says "weak sales may simply be a result of the group's incompetence." But we know weak sales =/= unsuccessful.
Maybe certain underground bands value musical incompetence and by being incompetent it makes them more authentically underground (early days garage punk?) If that were the case, that would rule out answer B.

[AlexW403]

I have the same question as the poster above - how do we know that a group's incompetence means they are unsuccessful? Especially when we are told that sales (the result of incompetence in the prompt) have nothing to do with success in either direction (good sales or bad sales). Thanks in advance if anyone can answer this.

[ohthatpatrick]

We don't know that incompetence makes them unsuccessful as an underground group.

That's why (B) is the correct answer. (B) tells us that idea. We were missing that link, and (B) provided it.

The author is trying to prove that "record sales do not sell you whether or not a group has succeeded as an underground group".

If we see good record sales, (we'd naturally assume "SUCCEEDED as an underground group"), but the author says the music might not have been authentically underground.

Okay, so she's assuming "if music was authentically underground, then the group didn't succeed as an underground group.

If we see weak record sales, (we'd naturally assume, after the previous sentence, "OH, these underground groups SUCCEEDED as an underground group because many underground musicians don't want to sell well) but the author is saying "yeah, but the sales might be weak because the group is incompetent, (not esoteric)."

Okay, so she's assuming "even if sales were weak, if the music was incompetent, then the group didn't succeed as an underground group.

I think the first missing link is a more important one to establish for the argument, and an answer only needs to strengthen the most to be right (it doesn't have to perfectly prove anything), but (B) ends up giving us a rule that takes us from either/both of the author's potential qualms (might not be authentically underground / might just be incompetent) and gets us to the language of the author's conclusion (about whether or not a group succeeded as an underground group).

[abrenza123]

I read this at first and was stuck between B and D and ruled out C without giving it another thought, but after rereading the answers and ended up choosing C because I thought it bridged the gap by saying:

underground musicians think its desirable for their recording to not sell well (recording not to sell well = desirable criteria)--> whether recordings meet many musicians' desirable criteria is not a mark of group's success --> record sales are not a mark of groups success

Why exactly is C wrong? I'd like to have a clear understanding so I don't make the same mistake twice!

Also, is B saying that if both

some recordings too trendy to be authentically underground --> ~ successful as underground group
~competent --> ~successful as underground group

then "sells well" CANNOT be a trigger/mark for success because then it would look like this:

SW --> some recordings too trendy to be authentically underground --> ~ successful as underground group
~SW --> ~competent --> ~successful as underground group

and that's invalid?

Help!!

[ohthatpatrick]

(C) only speaks about whether it's a mark of success, not about whether it's a mark of "success as an underground group".

That distinction may sound like it's splitting hairs, but that's kinda the whole gist of the argument, and the conclusion is specifically talking about "how many copies you sell isn't a good metric of whether you succeeded as an underground group"

Success, as conventionally understood, would be selling a lot of copies of your recordings.

Success as an underground group is apparently different. The author is seemingly implying that you could sell a lot of copies, but not be successful as an underground group (because maybe you were too trendy).

But you also can't use how well recordings sell as an inverse measure of success as an underground group. i.e., you can't assume that "the less well your recordings sold, the more success you had as an underground group". The author is implying that you could sell very few copies, but still be unsuccessful as an underground group (because you were incompetent).

In each of his examples,
1. sell a lot, but not successful as an underground group
2. sell a little, but not successful as an underground group
.... the author has left an idea unsaid

1. sell a lot -> too trendy --?--> not successful as an underground group
2. sell a little -> incompetent --?--> not successful as an underground group

It seems like success as an underground group involves being competent but not too trendy, whether or not you're crushing it with music sales.

(C) is making a bridge idea to conclusion, but it's grabbing something from the premises that is much more tangential.

The style of arguing is laying out a binary
This thing isn't a good metric for success at X.
When there is a lot of this thing, you may be unsuccessful at X.
When there's a little of this thing, you may be unsuccessful at X.

(B) is using the keywords for "here's what happens in world X, here's happens in world not-X"

(C) is using a tangential thing that happens only in world not-X.

.......................................^
.......................................|
.......................................|
This is what a logic robot would say to you in its dying breath.

It's the most beautiful sentence I've ever written. It made sense to me at the time, and now I'm convinced that it bends the mind into an incoherent pretzel.

Hope this helps.